


The German Vice

by pettypace



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Awkward Conversations, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Gay, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, a lot of yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25714231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettypace/pseuds/pettypace
Summary: "But Sebastien seemed to be the only one among them who knew shame. Had the years worn it out of them? Had the centuries worn propriety away like a badly fitted pair of shoes? "In which Booker works through his feelings about Nicolo and Yusuf's relationship in less than healthy ways. There is a lot of confused yearning and self-hatred. Warnings for period-typical attitudes toward sexuality. Hopeful ending, though!
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 38
Kudos: 493





	The German Vice

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all,  
> apologies for any messiness and historical inaccuracies. It's been a few years since I attempted to write fan fiction. With this story, I was working through some thoughts I had on Booker's experiences encountering so many openly queer folk during the early 19th century, especially in relation to my head canon that Booker is bi as hell (and just didn't realize that was possible yet).
> 
> Also, I use different names/aliases for the characters to correspond what time period, region they are in (Andromache occasionally goes as Andrea or Andre, for example-- or Nicolo and Yusuf as Nicholas and Josef.
> 
> It's mostly a bunch of intense conversations, as well as Booker consistently being drunk and sad. Thanks for reading!

Paris, 1815

Sebastien’s new comrades were unlike anyone he had ever known before, in more ways than one. They had pulled him from the battlefield and explained their shared condition. They had all dreamed of each other, before their first meeting. Nicholas and Josef and the woman who dressed like a man, Andrea. Strange companions who seemed to know him better than he knew himself. Eyes full of certainty when they looked at him and called him immortal (Andrea stabbed him to drive the point home). He had never been certain of anything in his life and here they were, naming him as one of their own. It was unsettling, to say the least.

And then, of course, there was the matter of their inversions. Andrea’s hunger for other women. Her masculine stance and cocky smile. And the two men, who privately called each other Nicolo and Yusuf, and other, gentler names— these men who shared a single bedroll at night and let themselves be weak in the other’s arms. It was unseemly. Shameful. “The German vice” his commanding officers had called it, back before Sebastien joined these new ranks. 

But Sebastien seemed to be the only one among them who knew shame. Had the years worn it out of them? Had the centuries worn propriety away like a badly fitted pair of shoes? 

At first, Sebastien was content with looking the other way. What two men did behind closed doors did not concern him, after all. Nicholas and Josef were within their rights to retreat to a room away from him; within their rights to look at each other with those arched eyebrows and secret smiles on their lips. His time in Napoleon’s army had exposed him to many such men with these predilections. Soldiers far from home all too happy to give a fellow comrade a hand in bed, providing comfort against the lonely march. Sebastien had always had thoughts of his wife to sustain him, and her letters. A prostitute now and again certainly hadn’t hurt the matter. 

But such things were not spoken of in the light of day, nor written down on papers that could be discovered by prying, less generous eyes. Worse, shared with family members or commanding officers or the respectable elements of society. One did not seek to be known for these weaknesses of the flesh. It was something to be sated and ignored, not flaunted for all the world to see.

But Nicholas and Josef did not seem to mind. The first time he found Josef’s sketches, lying carelessly visible upon Josef’s bedroll, he had recoiled. Tried as hard as he could, he could not erase their lines from his mind’s eye. All Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas— soft eyes, taut lines, arching hands. It was too much, too intimate. 

As a young man, Sebastien had given into these temptations only once. Before the army, before marriage, he had been a teenager fumbling with a friend of his in the fields behind his family’s farm. They had touched each other hungrily, competitive smiles on their faces as they brought each other to completion. But that had been an incident to forget, not one to remember. It had been only a source of embarrassment and quiet, buried fear. 

The first night he walked in on Nicholas and Josef occurred only a year into their acquaintance. He had been drunk and depressed, thoughts drifting and scattered by wine. Had he been more sober, perhaps he would have knocked. Perhaps he would have listened at the door and waited for any signs of indiscretion. On other nights, Andrea stood outside, a hand up to stop him and a knowing smirk. But Andrea was nowhere to be found on that particular night. Later he would realize she always knew to make herself scarce. Always knew to leave well enough alone. 

Not Sebastien, not yet. He was drunk and he was tired and ready to collapse into his cot in their most recent safe house, a small apartment amongst the tenements of Paris. It was two years since he had last seen his wife. One year since meeting these warriors out of time who informed him of his failure to die.

This particular safehouse was small and squalid-- one room shared by the four of them, but an easy location to escape into, amidst the poor and ignored of Paris. Sebastien had been out at the taverns, drinking away his memories for another wasted night. 

When he opened the door, the two men were so absorbed in each other they did not seem to see nor hear him. Nicholas was on his knees, gray eyes gazing up Josef’s body, moans of pleasure escaping between his full lips as he throated the other man’s length. Something hot coiled in Sebastien’s chest, sinking through his body to the tips of his fingers and deep in his groin. There was a shattering of glass, and the two men’s faces whipped toward him. It took Sebastien a moment to realize that the shattering had been his own bottle of wine, dropped from listless fingers. 

Josef and Nicholas were already moving away from each other, Nicholas scrambling back on his knees. They didn’t look ashamed or fearful-- expressions he had seen on other men’s faces, caught in similar acts. If anything, Josef looked amused, saying something to Nicholas in a tongue Sebastien did not yet know as he tucked himself back into his trousers. They were always speaking to each other like this, moving through different languages at a rapid pace, as if challenging the rest of the world to understand them. 

Nicholas had laughter on his lips as he called out to Sebastien in French, “You’re back early, brother!” He used the term mon frere as if they had always spoken to each other that way, an easy familiarity and softness in his voice. How long had Nicholas and Josef called each other brothers before they began fucking each other like husband and wife? The thought unsettled Sebastien. Made his skin crawl. 

“I’m not your brother,” he spat, half surprised by his own disgust. “Fucking sodomite.” And he stormed back out the door without a second glance. Despite this, he did not miss the look of hurt and betrayal in Nicky’s eyes, nor the snarl of anger from Josef’s mouth that followed him out the door and onto the streets of Paris. 

Different shames warred in his throat, a lump the size of a fist choking him as he stumbled down the dim night street. A group of women, heavily rouged, dresses falling low on their breasts, waved and called to him from a street corner. Sebastien turned toward their enticing, desperate calls, ready to find some comfort in the arms of a woman as any man should want. He was a man who wanted women, he told himself. Who did not become excited by the nakedness of his male companions. Who did not dream at night of being defiled like a whore. 

He was the one who did the defiling. 

The particular prostitute’s chosen name drifted from his mind the moment she said it. She led him to a dark, small room with only a curtain for the door. Spread her legs, hiked up her skirts, and touched his hair with work-calloused fingers as he bent over her, eyes shut and face red with wine and self-hatred. 

He paid her when he finished, then paid for some more time alone in that room. An unusual request, she told him, but she took the money and returned to the street with only an amused backwards glance. He cleaned himself as best he could, seed spilled all over his stomach. There was shame in this, too. He was not absolved of wickedness. No, nor were his thoughts without sin. The prostitute’s body was so soft, so different from Nicholas’s wiry, muscled frame. Did Nicholas let Josef finish inside him? It obsessed his thoughts. 

Sebastien lay in the dark, listening to the sounds of the brothel around him. Try as he might, he could not escape the image of Nicholas and Josef together. The two men invaded his thoughts: Josef’s easy, confident smile, and Nicholas’ gentle face. They had something between them he could not fathom. Could not touch.

Fitfully, slowly, Sebastien hugged himself to sleep, the sounds of the busy brothel in the early morning only emphasizing his loneliness.

\---

The next morning, Sebastien slunk home with his proverbial tail between his legs. There was nothing else for him to do but to face them. To apologize. 

But neither Nicholas nor Josef were there to greet him. Only Andrea, dressed as Andrè— men’s trousers and coat fitting well around her strong shoulders. She looked up at him with narrowed eyes, face handsome as any man’s. 

“Where are they?” He did not explain further. 

“At the markets.” There was a pregnant pause, then: “You and I must talk.” 

He knew she knew everything. The three other immortals kept few secrets amongst themselves. There was so much they shared. He was the young one, the new one, the not yet trusted one. Loneliness pushed tears into his eyes, but he blinked them away. 

“Must we?” he tried to sound nonchalant, but his voice caught on the question. He was tired of feeling out of step. Tired of feeling foolish.

“If you wish to continue in our company, yes. If you do not wish to travel and fight alongside sodomites, however—“ 

Sebastien flinched at the word, eyes closing. The tears were truly slipping down his cheeks, unmanning him. When he opened his eyes again, he was turned away from her, hoping to avoid her gaze. 

“I did not intend offense.”

“Intention has nothing to do with it.”

He pointed to the cot where just hours before, Nicholas and Josef had been fucking. “What a man does behind closed doors is his business, but must they be so— so brazen?” 

To his surprise, Andrea released a bark of laughter. “You truly have not seen Nicolo and Yusuf being brazen,” she said, smirking. “Trust me—we’ve fought together for hundreds of years and they act with each other as if they were just married.” 

“Men do not act that way with each other. There is filial love, and there is carnal lust. But they— they seem —“ 

“The older you become the more you realize the difference between truth and custom. It is custom in this place and time…” She gestured around herself, as if to say Paris, 1814, “...for men to not love and live as Nicolo and Yusuf do. But the truth is that they do. And nothing you think or say may alter this truth.”

Sebastien blinked at her, feeling a rush of blood to his head. There was a mighty pounding against his temple, and he sat down, hard, upon his cot. “It is not natural,” he said, voice low and quiet. 

“Are we not natural?” Andrea asked, and there was a challenge in her voice. She stood, boots heavy on the ground, arms crossed before her. Sebastien looked her up and down; he tried to conjure up what proper society would say of someone like her, dressed in this way. He only saw Andrea. Handsome, strong Andrea, who could cut a man down without thought. Who had found him on the battlefield, impossibly alive. Had offered him a purpose. A family. 

“I will apologize. I will make amends.” It was a promise and a plea. Underneath his words there was the fear that would never go away, that they would leave him truly alone. Already he had lost everything, before them. 

Outside, footsteps approached. Andrea cocked her head toward the sound, raising an eyebrow. “Do,” she said. 

As if on cue, the door opened. Josef entered first, followed by Nicholas with a basket of food. They’d been to market, and the scent of fresh spices and sunlight entered the small room with them. Sebastien suddenly felt himself to be dirty, aware of his own sweat-dampened clothes and sour breath. 

Josef narrowed his eyes when he saw Sebastien and remained in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. But Nicholas continued almost blithely into the apartment, an unreadable stoicism on his face as he unpacked the food from market. Never once did he look towards where Sebastien sat, hunched over his own hands and guilt. 

Andrea broke the silence first. “I leave him to you,” she said, patting Josef on the shoulder as she passed him in the doorway. “Be gentle, my brothers.” 

Josef huffed at this, but he now had a small smile on his face. “I am gentle as a lamb,” he called after her. She laughed heartily before the door closed fully behind her. 

Sebastien stood up and moved towards Nicholas, hoping to offer to help him unpack. But he felt lightheaded as soon as he stood, vision clouding at the corners. Without warning, he sunk to his knees, feeling limp as a ragdoll. Nicholas looked up at him for the first time since entering, eyes sharp as flint. 

“Please forgive me, brothers,” Sebastien said, words mushy in his tearful mouth. “Nicholas, please.”

Nicholas looked from Sebastien up towards Josef, behind his shoulder. A silent conversation passed between them. 

Josef’s hand fell heavy on Sebastien’s arm, but his grip was not hard. Sebastien could feel the other man standing beside him, and though he had seen Josef kill a man with only his bare hands, there was no violence in this moment. Several long seconds passed, and the only sounds in the room were Sebastien's ragged breaths. When Josef spoke, his voice was soft but firm. He had simple, clear conviction with every word he spoke. 

“You know that I have loved this man longer than empires have risen and fallen,” Josef said. “Our love has sustained us across centuries. Across war and peace, famine and bounty. You know this, yes?” 

Sebastien nodded, unable to speak. 

“You know this, yet you spat on our love.” 

“Why?” Nicholas asked now, voice harder than Josef’s. Nicholas, who carried his anger in stillness. “We did you no harm.”

Sebastien hung his head, resisting Josef’s grip urging him to his feet. Instead, he dropped even lower, prostrating himself before Nicholas. The wood of the floor was rough against his face, but it felt right. He was lower than dirt. 

“Forgive me, I did not understand,” Sebastien said, but as he said it the words seemed wrong. “No, I did understand. I understood that you love each other, and yet—“ He raised his eyes from the floor to Nicholas’s face. “Yet I felt angry. Angry that you should feel such happiness while I am so alone.”

Surprise flickered in Nicholas’ face. At Sebastien’s honesty, or his cruelty? “You are not alone, brother.”

Oh, but he was. Achingly so. 

Sebastien looked to Josef, whose brow was furrowed. “You disrespect our love again, you will lose our trust. And no man is a warrior without his comrades’ trusts.”

Sebastien nodded, looking between the two men. “I will fight for you, proudly. Now and always.” 

Nicholas nodded, accepting this. 

Josef continued, “And if you walk in on Nicolo and I making love, you leave or you watch, it matters not. But you do not bring your hate into our love. It is simple, no?”

“Yes. Simple.” Sebastien said, lying.

—

South of France, 1840

Months passed, then years. Decades slipped like sand through their fingers. Andrea went by Andre when the mood and the situation suited. Occasionally, she let them call her Andromache. 

Sebastien earned the nickname Booker. He preferred to forget his old name. 

Andrea, Josef, and Nicholas treated him as a younger brother, all in their own ways. Josef with his twinkling eyes and teasing jokes, Andrea ever ready to share a bottle and a story. And Nicholas, the quieter of the three, always so kind to him when he felt most low. It was Nicholas’s kindness that somehow unearthed his own shame, his buried desires. It was those eyes he could not meet the next morning after a night spent yearning. 

And time passed. 

He watched from afar as his youngest son, Jean-Pierre, aged, then died of a sickness he did not understand. Despite Andromache’s warnings, Booker visited his son’s bedside. The hatred and despair in Jean-Pierre’s voice hurt more than any death he had ever experienced before that day. 

The days following that final visit were lost to a blur of alcohol and vomit in back alleyways. It was Nicholas who eventually found Booker arrested for public drunkenness and vagrancy in a village gaol. Booker doesn’t quite remember the chain of events-- at some point, Nicholas paid bail, Booker changed shirts, and they were riding horses together out of town. Then, Booker fell off his horse and broke his ankle.

“I suppose we shall stop to camp before riding on,” Nicholas said, a wry smile in his voice. Sebastien simply groaned from his place in the dirt. “The others will have to wait on us one more night.” 

“Where are they?” 

“As I said, Barcelona,” Nicholas said over his shoulder as he tied up the horses. “But it seems you’ve impaired your memory.” 

“Permanently, I hope,” Booker said, collapsing onto his bedroll, wincing against the pain of his healing ankle. 

“Do not sleep yet,” Nicholas said. “You must eat.” 

“Or what, I’ll die?” Booker meant it as a joke, but even he could hear the break in his voice. Nicholas did not acknowledge this, focused as he was on starting a campfire. It was one of his many small kindnesses. Booker should be writing them down, lest he forget how good humans could be to each other. It was already too easy to forget kindness, after seeing so much cruelty. 

The silence that followed was a companionable one. Nicholas’ hands were delicate and sure as he kindled the flame, the light flickering across his face, caressing his features in a warm glow. 

Booker winced as he felt the bruises from his fall heal. Even after all this time, he wasn’t used to the feeling of his body knitting itself back together at high speed. Just once, he wanted to sit in his pain. “Why did you come find me?”

The smell of toasting bread filled the air as Nicholas cut chunks from a baguette and placed them over the campfire griddle. “I pulled the short straw,” Nicholas said. 

They grinned at each other, an easy friendliness softening the air. But something sharp twisted in Booker’s heart. 

One meal later, with the fire dying between them, Booker finally found it in himself to say what was on his mind. “Did you ever hurt like this?”

Nicholas gazed steadily at Booker over the low embers. His silence seemed to be its own answer, to Booker’s mind.

“Or were you too preoccupied with Josef? With your newfound happiness? Too busy to care that everything and everyone you loved before was dying?” he could not stop himself from digging the knife in and twisting. It felt good to speak of his anger. His jealousy.

“Do not presume to know my grief, brother,” Nicholas said. “I too lost everything.” 

“You’ve never lost Yusuf,” Booker countered. “Not truly. And I’ve lost my wife, my son, my whole family. Everyone who cared for me is gone.” 

“We care for you,” Nicholas said. 

This was a sidestep, and Nicholas must know it. Booker closed his eyes and bit out the words snarling up from inside him. “Would you hold me? Would you keep me warm at night? Would you let me fuck you, and love me for it?” He was trembling against the venom in his own words. “I will never feel the peace you or Yusuf feel with each other, loving without fear of loss.” 

“There are many ways to lose someone,” was all Nicholas said, before turning over in his bedroll. The conversation was over. 

But Booker was not tired anymore. He was wide awake and thrumming with a manic, uncontrollable energy. “Did you and he begin fucking because there was no other choice?” The words smoldered in the heavy, encroaching darkness. “Was there nowhere else to place your love but another lonely man? Or were you sick already, before you ever met Yusuf? How many men did you let defile you, before you found someone who would do it for centuries?” 

A force like a cannon blast pushed him off his feet, and he barely had time to register Nicholas was standing over him before he felt the icy pain of a sword nicking his throat. Booker stared up at the other man, whose face was in shadows, expression unreadable. The sword against his throat spoke for itself. 

“Kill me,” Booker snarled. “Please. Do it again and again and again.” Until it sticks, he did not say. But they both heard it in his words. 

“You are a sad, cruel man,” Nicholas said, voice level, almost cold. The sword pressed against his artery, a soft pressure a hair’s breadth away from death. “I do not know why fate has pushed our lives together. But it has, whether you accept it or not.” And then the pressure lifted, and Nicholas was sheathing his sword. 

“I would learn to love you, if I could,” Booker whispered. He wished he could take this moment and swallow it whole, wished he might take Nicholas’ anger and transform it into something else. Something soft. “I would let it happen, if you wanted me.”

“You overstep,” the other man said. 

“I can’t seem to stop.” He was like Icarus, always flying too close to the sun. And Nicholas could burn, so hot and so fast it would destroy him to truly feel it. 

“Sleep,” Nicholas ordered. “Your wine has you made you dumb.”

But Booker felt more sober than he had in days. He said nothing, and that was better for them both. 

\---

Genoa, 1877

They were between jobs and on a much needed vacation. It was Nicolo’s turn to determine the location, so he chose his hometown of Genoa. Italy had been declared a Kingdom only two decades prior, united under the capital city of Rome as recently as 1871. But if you asked Nicolo, he was Genoese, not Italian. “We will take our rest in my homeland,” Nicolo declared. 

Yusuf smiled at his lover when he said it, raising an eyebrow in an “of course” gesture. Nicolo waved his hands as if to shoo away Yusuf’s teasing. “It has been a few hundred years, and Booker has yet to see!” 

Booker would be lying if he said he wasn’t touched by this thoughtfulness, so he didn’t say anything. Just nodded his head in Nicolo’s direction, raising a flask of whiskey to his lips as he did so. 

Andromache told the men to enjoy themselves, but she had business elsewhere. Almost as soon as their horses brought them to Genoa, Andromache was riding for the docks. She boarded a boat to London with a grim look on her face that left Nicolo and Yusuf similarly quiet, faces creased. 

The three men found rooms at an inn just inside Genoa’s walls. It was a bustling port city, with many buildings as old as the Roman Republic. A truly beautiful city, Booker told Nicolo. The Genoese man beamed in response. 

That evening, the two lovers split a bottle of wine (as Booker downed his whiskey) and offered to share stories with their younger friend. After an hour or so of adventure stories, Booker asked, as he did every few years, about Quynh. “That’s where she went, right? To search for her, still?”

Nicolo and Yusuf shared a look, determining who would speak first, and Booker was reminded once more of how much the other three Immortals shared. They held memories and grief that he would never truly know. 

“She never rests,” Nicolo said sadly. 

They all knew he meant Andromache. 

Yusuf touched Nicolo’s arm. “Would you if you were her?”

They exchanged a look that said it all. Booker had to glance away, focusing his attention on his flask. Sometimes it was too much to bear.

At first, Booker assumed Andromache and Quynh had been close friends. Romantic friends, even, based on the way she spoke of her. But he finally asked what he had always wondered, ever since learning of Quynh’s fate. “Were they to each other as you two are?” After a beat, he added: “One soul in two bodies.” 

It was the first time he had articulated the two men’s relationship in this way. He tried to recoup with his customary nonchalance, kicking his feet up on the table and waving his fingers in an illustrative gesture. “...if you want to be poetical about it, I mean.” 

Yusuf smiled, a softness in his face. “When we met them, those two had loved each other deeper and longer than we had been alive. They were very special to each other, were they not, my heart?” 

In Nicolo’s eyes there was a deep pain, his own gaze fixed upon Yusuf. “Yes, love,” he murmured. There was a long silence, broken only by the clink of Yusuf’s wine glass as he brought it to his lips. 

“It’s fortunate, is it not? That you and the love of your life should both share in the same condition,” Booker said to Nicolo, voice more casual than his feelings. The dregs of whiskey in his flask were beginning to taste like bile. “Andromache and Quynh. You and Yusuf.” He gestured between the two of them, smiling with his teeth. 

At Booker’s words, the other two glanced at each other. They were always looking at each other, no matter who else was in the room. Booker watched another silent conversation pass between them until he could remain silent himself no longer. 

“I wonder where my immortal love is,” Booker said, tone forcibly light. “Where is my Quynh?” My Nicolo, he did not say. My Yusuf. My Andromache. None of them belonged to him. 

“You do not wish to feel what Andromache does,” Yusuf warned earnestly. “And you do not wish to fear as I do. Fear to lose Nicolo. Fear to wake up from my wounds when he does not. Or worse-- fear to know he is in pain, as Quynh is, endlessly.” 

Booker looked between the two lovers, a rueful phrase on his lips that died as he realized his misstep. There was so much pain in their eyes. So much fear. Outside, the sounds of the city at night continued in a ceaseless murmur, but inside their room, there was a pressing silence. 

“You are right, my brother,” Booker said. “I am sorry.” 

Nicolo sat back and looked at them both over the top of his wine glass. “No blessing is without its curse. No joy without its pain.” 

Yes, Booker did not say. Yes, but what of pain without joy? I have much of that. 

He held his words inside him. It was better that way. 

\---

The following night, they all went drinking and dancing in bars across the city, the press of humanity so intense that no one looked too hard at Nicolo and Yusuf tangling their arms together in a corner room. No one except Booker, who remained stubbornly too sober as the night wore on. He was convinced his immortality was impacting his tolerance, a tragic side effect indeed. One tragedy of many.

What he had not truly realized until he’d lived it was that, despite the amazing healing powers and his eternal youth, he felt every bit his age. One hundred years on this earth, each year passing only taking him further and further from the life he’d been born into. Further from the world he once knew, before returning to life on the battlefield. 

He chuckled to think of himself as a Don Quixote— a man out of time. But it was how he felt. Increasingly out of touch. That’s why he had become the group’s technological leader, keeping up with an ever advancing world. He had sent telegraphs before they were common, learned to use cameras, traveled on one of the first steam engines. He needed to keep up. Needed to be of use. 

As a younger man, Booker had lost himself in novels. But now he rarely read anymore. Didn’t like how reading seemed to slow down time, make him contemplate the world, when all he truly wanted was to forget. To skip forward through the years. 

In fact, his favorite book had been Don Quixote. Fitting, perhaps, that he should identify so strongly with a man swinging lances at windmills. Fighting duels against nothing was his strong suit. 

Andromache had discovered this about him a few decades prior, picking the novel out of his travel pack and waving it at him over a campfire. “Another scholar among us, eh?” 

“Not like Yusuf or Nicolo,” Booker said. “They have outread me by centuries.”

“You better believe it, my friend,” Yusuf had laughed. “Nicolo devours libraries for his breakfast.” 

Yet Booker had smiled as Andromache handed him the book, flipping confidently to his favorite quote. 

The other three listened intently as he read aloud to them: "When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"

Andromache had clapped appreciatively, while Nicolo sighed, “Ah Cervantes, a wonderful man.” They toasted the Spaniard before continuing with their night. 

Booker thought of Cervantes’ words now as he watched Yusuf and Nicolo dance together. It seemed that there was something of madness in Yusuf and Nicolo’s love. It defied all of the world. How could they be so free with each other? So open? 

Were they mad? Or the world? Perhaps-- Booker grinned ruefully over his whiskey-- perhaps he was the maddest of them all. 

Yusuf was the one who called Booker onto his feet. Grabbed him from his hunched seat in the corner and swung him to the music. Nicolo was laughing, head thrown back with more abandon and joy than Booker had ever seen him display. It was such a change from the night before. Together, Nicolo and Yusuf crowded around Booker, arms loose about each other as the string instruments played a jaunty tune. 

Nicolo pressed his lips to Yusuf’s cheek, then turned and brushed them against Booker’s. It was nothing but platonic, innocent joy, Booker could tell. But his skin was so warm in the wake of his lips, aflame with the gentle touch. 

If it had been a different night, if it had been a different song, it may not have happened. If Booker was a different man, one who acted with propriety and public decency— But he wasn’t. He didn’t. Something in the press of bodies and the intimacy of the bar made him feel more than drunk. Made him feel free. Then he did something he had not thought himself capable of.

He kissed Nicolo. 

It was a hard, energetic press of lips to lips. One could excuse it for Italian effusiveness. Excitement from the music and from the whiskey, released. But Booker was not effusive, nor Italian. Nicolo’s gray eyes blinked open, staring with confusion into his own as he reared back.

“Forgive me,” Booker spluttered, before turning on his heel and stumbling for the exit. The crowd closed about him, caught up in the dance. 

Booker spared one glance back, to see the men’s faces turned toward each other. Nicolo’s arm rested against Yusuf’s waist. They were speaking quietly, a private conversation in a crowded bar. Not even sparing a glance his way. Only eyes for each other, only words for each other. 

There was no room in their shared universe for him. Where would there ever be room for all this horrible, shameful want? 

There was a key change as the band began to play a slower, more somber tune. Booker took it as his cue to leave. 

\---

It was Yusuf who sought Booker out the next day, discovering him before sun-up sitting on a pier with an empty bottle of brandy at his side. He wasn’t sure how Yusuf knew to look for him by the Genoese docks. Perhaps he had left a trail of tears and vomit without realizing. 

More likely still, Yusuf knew him too well. It was oddly comforting, to be known that way. Booker always sought a view of restless waters when the mood took him. Always preferred gazing out at the ocean than inward at his own depravity. It had been cause for much teasing in the years gone past, with Yusuf interrupting his reveries as he stood at the prows of ships, or overlooking stormy waves at dawn. 

“Have you slept at all, or have you become a statue at last?” Yusuf asked as he found a seat beside Booker. The darker man’s face was kind, eyes gently crinkled. He looked well-rested, the antithesis of Booker’s own state.

“If drinking myself to a stupor counts as resting…” Booker said. Yusuf huffed in amusement or annoyance, he couldn’t tell.

The two men’s legs dangled over the dockside, a comfortable distance between them as they stared out towards the softening horizon line. The sun was shimmering just below the sky, bathing the world in a soft pink glow. Booker couldn’t find it in himself to break the silence. 

Beside him, Yusuf hummed softly before asking, “Do you love my Nico?” 

There was a moment in which Booker considered flinging himself into the bay to let the water have its way with him. He spluttered before ducking his head to look at Yusuf, who only turned his face to smile serenely at him. No danger, no threat. Only quiet curiosity. 

“I am not--” Booker began, then stopped. “I do not feel that way towards men.” 

“I don’t ask how you feel towards men, I ask how you feel towards Nicolo.” 

How did he feel towards Nicolo? It was a complicated question, bound up as it was with other feelings. Feelings of loneliness and self-hatred and desire for absolution. “I feel toward him as a brother. As I feel toward you-- we are brothers.” Though he remained seated on the dock, Booker’s hands were twitching beside him, itching to push himself up off the ground and run. 

By then, the sun had fully breached the horizon line and Booker had to squint his eyes against the blinding light.

Beside him, Yusuf simply closed his eyes and basked in the sunlight, leaning back nonchalantly on his elbows. Around them, the port was beginning to come to life, fishing boats docking and merchants arriving to set up their stalls. Booker could hardly hear Yusuf’s next question over the pounding of his heart. “Why did you leave us last night?” 

Wasn’t it obvious? “I-- I overstepped.” 

“There is no shame in expressing affection, Booker,” Yusuf said lightly. “It was a simple kiss. A simple expression of delight, yes?” 

“Yes,” Booker agreed, doubtfully. But there was more to be said, so he finally said it. “No, not delight. Want. I want what you have, Yusuf,” he whispered, voice so low he could almost pretend he had not said anything.

But Yusuf heard him. 

“What do you want, truly?” Yusuf asked, still kind. Why was he so kind? Yusuf should hate him, should want to fight him, should feel contempt for him at the very least. 

“I want... to understand why I feel the way I do about… about Nicolo, about you… when I have loved my wife as a good husband should,” Booker said slowly, filled with shame at every word. “I want to no longer be so alone. I want to not be myself, truly not myself, but someone else.” What did the dockworkers think as they hurried back and forth behind them? What did the world see when it looked at him, a blubbering old fool. God, he was so old and out of step. “When I die, I want it to stick,” he continued, breathing harshly. “For once, I want to not wake up.” 

The silence that followed between them was more profound than any silence that came before, the words sinking into their skin, their bones, their thoughts. At last, Yusuf hissed a held breath between his teeth, whistling softly. “I am sorry, my brother,” he said. 

“So am I.” 

The water lapped against the wooden columns of the pier, the force of the water pushing and pulling itself below their feet. 

“When I first woke up from death, I wanted only more death,” Yusuf said, gaze directed away toward the sun. “I lost my city, my brothers in arms, my family and all I knew. I lost my faith by the fifth death, regained it by the sixth. I was remade, again and again, and only ever thought myself capable of more death. But it was not death that freed me from the cycle, Booker.” 

“Was it Nicolo?” Booker asked, voice flat and almost wry once more. 

“No,” Yusuf said firmly. Booker looked up, surprised. “I freed myself. I chose to stop fighting myself and to simply let myself be. Let myself love. 

“Choosing to love Nicolo was only possible when I let myself love him,” Yusuf continued. “When I realized myself capable of more than killing and dying, but truly living again.” 

“But where do I put my love?” Booker punched the wood beside himself, reveling in the painful force reciprocated by the planks. The pressure pushing against pressure. “Where does it go, when it is not wanted?” 

“We will take it, Sebastien,” Yusuf said. “Give it to me, my friend. Love me, love Nicolo, love Andromache. It truly is simple.” 

Wordlessly, Booker stood. Yusuf joined him. Then, almost before he could realize what he was doing, his arms were around Yusuf, holding tightly to him, leaning his own wet, tearful face into Yusuf’s strong shoulder. And Yusuf’s arms wrapped around his frame and simply held on, offering a forgiveness that Booker had not realized he could ever receive. 

There were taunts and laughs in the distance. Stares from passerby. There would always be men who wouldn’t understand. Booker knew this at his core.

But Booker realized, standing there with his arms around another man— he didn’t care. Not anymore. 

And he felt free as he had never felt before.


End file.
